Randy Evans's blog

City leaders in Davenport have forgotten that city government there belongs to the people. It does not belong to the folks who were elected to city offices.

This reminder is necessary because a troubling series of events that is unlike any I have seen in five decades of monitoring the goings-on in local governments across Iowa.

The shenanigans should have State Auditor Rob Sand knocking on the doors at City Hall. He should be asking questions on behalf of the tax-paying people of Davenport — because city leaders there are not answering questions from the public or journalists.

An investigation by the taxpayers’ watchdog also would serve notice to officials elsewhere in Iowa to not try using Davenport’s secrecy strategy in their communities to keep the public in the dark about embarrassing or controversial decisions government makes.

A few months ago, I bumped into a former aide to Gov. Robert Ray. As we reminisced about the governor, our conversation turned to his nearly daily meetings with journalists.

The aide said yes, those press conferences provided reporters with access to the governor and his comments on issues the state was handling and hearing about from Iowans.

But Ray believed the daily press gatherings had another important benefit, too: Ray could do his job more effectively by listening to the journalists’ questions, the aide said.

State government is a sprawling operation. With reporters combing government agencies for news and bringing their questions to the governor, it meant Ray would be better informed about what was going on in the government he was responsible for managing. Sometimes, those questions dealt with concerns the governor was unaware of — matters that could be dealt with quickly before a small issue could grow into a bigger problem.

Today, Iowa is at the point where one issue has been allowed to fester into a significant problem — and this should alarm Iowans with elderly relatives or who expect to be elderly someday themselves. That issue is the quality of care provided by some of Iowa’s 414 nursing homes and care centers.

This is my favorite time of the year. There is no late-night bombardment from infernal fireworks like there is with the Fourth of July. There is not the pressure of Christmas to choose just the right gift.

With Thanksgiving, it is about enjoying the company of family and friends — and deciding whether to scoop up pumpkin pie, apple or banana cream. With Thanksgiving, it is a time to reflect on our blessings and to think about others who are not as fortunate.

Back during my years as a newspaper editor, I was always eager for stories that raised our spirits and warmed our hearts. Those stories were a needed antidote to the heartache that seemed too often be in the news.

The word for today is optics — but not the kind where your eye doctor is an expert.

Instead of eyeglasses, I am thinking about the kind of optics that result when the perception of some person’s or some institution’s values are contradicted by the reality of the actions they take.

Here's an example. This involves poor optics.

Librarians across Iowa have been put on the defensive by parents and grandparents who criticize some of the thousands of books that fill a community library or school library. This criticism has been especially sharp toward books intended for teenage readers that contain content with homosexual or transsexual themes or that include descriptions of sexual encounters that some people believe are too explicit for these readers.

Librarians have stepped forward to explain that it is not proper for people to force the removal of challenged books, thereby taking away other people’s ability to choose what they want to read or what they want their children to read. Library administrators have informed parents how they can limit the books their children have access to in the library or in the classroom.

Veterans Day is around the corner. For John and Bob, the day will be for remembering the men and women who serve in the United States military — and for two service members, in particular.

For John, it will be his son, Robert, a Marine lieutenant who will forever be 29 years old. For Bob, it will be his father, Karl, forever the face on treasured family photographs of a handsome 26-year-old Army captain.

John and Bob are patriots through and through. They are not big-government fanatics. They have something else in common, too. They both believe the American people should never forget the ultimate sacrifice paid by members of the U.S. military, and that is a reason they are disappointed with a decision made by the government they love.

They believe the federal government has made a terrible, insensitive mistake by walking away from a pledge to the families of our war dead after World War II — to make it convenient for Gold Star families to remember their 234,000 loved ones who are interred or commemorated in 26 military cemeteries and memorials in more than a dozen foreign countries.

The rationale behind Iowa’s professional licensing laws is simple:

People in certain professions and skilled occupations are required to hold state licenses to work in Iowa. This is to ensure they meet the minimum standard of training and skill necessary to serve consumers safely and effectively.

But a state government policy change leads me to wonder whether our state officials have lost sight of their obligation to act in the best interests of the public. If officials follow through with the new policy in the coming months, then members of the Legislature should step in next session and correct this ill-conceived policy change —and concerned citizens should encourage their lawmakers stick up for the public.

This policy change was disclosed last week by Iowa Capital Dispatch, an independent, nonprofit news site, and its dogged investigative reporter Clark Kauffman. The change, in effect, will keep the public in the dark about the factual circumstances that lead Iowa licensing boards to discipline license holders for violating professional and ethical standards.

For many years, an Iowa State University political science professor and I met several times a year for coffee and conversation.

During our coffee klatches, I probed my friend’s thinking on world affairs, on government issues, and on politics in Iowa and across the United States. I suspect he tried to use these get-togethers to give me a something of a graduate-level seminar in American government, absent any lectures.

Educators these days are frequently accused of trying to indoctrinate their students with a particular point of view. But what I came to realize during those sessions at the Stomping Grounds coffee shop in Ames was fundamental to excellence in teaching: The professor did not tell me what to think. He tried to get me to think more clearly and to analyze with more sophistication and depth. He helped me spot weaknesses in my own opinions and develop a better understanding of factors that may lead other people to see things differently than I did.

Back where I came from, you do not expect to have a bomb-sniffing dog circle your car when you pull into the parking lot for Sunday church services.

But that is what occurred. After the dog’s sensitive nose checked our car, a man on the front step gave us a quick once-over with his hand-held metal detector. Then an usher directed my wife, our youngest daughter and me into a pew in the second row of the sanctuary of the simple brick building with a thin spire.

Of course, until that day in April 2011 I had never been to church when a former president of the United States was teaching the Sunday School lesson. It is easy to become flummoxed — even for an editor who has conversed with presidents and quizzed many wanna-be’s — when Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter slide into the pew beside you.

Many decades ago, Mrs. Gentry and Mr. Halferty put up with an inquisitive kid’s classroom questions about American democracy and the workings of government.

I did not imagine back then how the meaning of some words could take on such importance in government. Take, for example, a much-talked-about word in Iowa last week, vexatious. It means abrasive, aggravating, annoying, irritating or nettlesome.

Whether you vote for Democrats, Republicans or Whigs, everyone should have access to government records that are not confidential. That is a way for you to understand what your state and local government is doing.

Iowa’s open records law says succinctly: “Every person shall have the right to examine and copy a public record and to publish or otherwise disseminate a public record or the information contained in a public record.”

Deanna Mahoney was like countless Iowa women through the years. She nurtured three children. She worked outside the home to supplement the family income. She loved bowling and mushroom hunting.

That is how she lived.

How she died tells us so much about the way some business owners, and too many government leaders in Iowa, have pushed aside their legal, moral and humanitarian obligations, especially to vulnerable Iowans.

The death of the 83-year-old Newton woman was tragic. Two photographs made that so horribly clear.

In spite of the statements and pledges about the sanctity of every human life, Mahoney’s death illustrates that too many members of the Iowa Legislature, and our governor, too, show too little concern for the sanctity of the lives of people in Iowa’s nursing homes.